Selective printing-plate.



. C. DOLCATER.

'TIVE PRINTING PLATE. APPLICATION FILED JAN. 30. I917.-

.'1,259,0Q 1 Patented Mar.12,1918.

gnucnfoz UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

FREDERICK C. DOLCATER, OF ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, ASSIGNOR TO MONTAGUE MAILING MACHINERY ('20., OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, A CORPORATION OF TENNESSEE.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Original application filed August 5, 1914, Serial No. 855.238. Divided and this application filed January 30,

Patented Mar. 12, 1918.

1917. Serial No. 145,480.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, FREDERICK G. Don- CATER, a citizen of the United States, and resident of Rochester, New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Selective Printing-Plates, of which the to-the adding mechanism, or the selective feature of the plate may be employed for other purposes.

The invention is shown in the accompanying drawings, in whichigure 1 is a plan view of a printing plate having the selecting means thereon.

Fig. 2 is a sectional view of the plate.

Fig. 3 is a plan view of a printing plate having selecting embossings for controlling or determining the transfer of the value represented by the plate to adding mechanism.

Fig. 4 is a view of the opposite face of the plate from that shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5 is a view of certain elements of an apparatus intended to cooperate with the printing plate of Figs. 1 and 2. a

While the printing late may be employed in different Ways, I 1 lustrate, as an example, in Fig. 5, certain of the elements of an apparatus which are intended to coiiperate with the printingplate in performing its functions. In this v1ew 28 represents a table having a runway to receive the depressed margin of the printing plate at 14 and also a second runway to receive the other depressed margin of the plate, as at 21, this second runway having suitable means, as a reciprocatory bar indicated at 20, for giving the printing plates a step by step movement along the runway to feed them to the impression point under an impression head (not shown) The printing plates are preferably of the I well known Montague type manufactured under patents of Owens No. 939,739, November 9th, 1909, and Lee No. 982,076, January 17th, 1911. These plates are provided with embossed printing characters from which the impressions are made, and in my present invention I employ selective means to determine whether or not the plates are to be printed from, these selecting means being indicated in Figs. 1 and 5 at X. Cotiperating with these selecting points, or projections, I show, in Fig. 5, contact points, or a single contact point may be used, this point, or points, being indicated at Y andbeing carried removably and interchangeably in a holder 26. This holder ma be constructed in various ways, but I pre er to form it of can be made to control the operation of the impression head at the proper time for thus determining whether or not an impression shall be made from this particular plate. As the mechanism cooperating with the plate forms no part of the present invention, I do not think it necessary to further describe such mechanism.

It will be observed that the record plates having the selective device embossed thereon are of advantage over any form of plate having removable tabs or other adjustable selective means. The plate can be made of a selective character at the same time that the address or information is embossed thereon, that is, while the plate is in the machine being embossed with the address it can be embossed at the same time and by the same machine with the character or characters which are to classify the plate.

Furthermore, it sometimes happens that a customer must be transferred from one class to another. To do this, it is simply necessary with my invention to blank out, i. 6., press down or obliterate the selector character and remboss the plate with the selector character at the proper point to put the customer in his proper class. With the embossed selector devices danger of loss of identity of the plate is prevented.

By employing alphabetical characters or numbers as the selective devices, the class or classes to which the plate belongs can be read at a glance. For instance, if the letter A appears as the selective character, the plate belongs to the A or first class. If C appears it can be seen that it belongs in the third or C class. Each class, therefore, will be designated by its own particular sign or combination of signs which will be different from the si ms or combination of signs designatin 0t er classes. These signs-will not only e distinctive in themselves, but their location will be distinctive; thus A will occupy the first position; D the fourth, and so on throughout the list of signs, so that the operator, in embossing the plate, will be able to place the sign in roper position quickly and certainly, and t e hability of mistake will be reduced.

Furthermore, the embossed classifying sign can be printed on the wrapper, envelop, card or other matter, because the said sign is raised from the main body of the plate just as the letters or characters of the address or other information is raised or embossed. B reason of this the article when printed wi l have a class indication thereon y which it may be -identified and treated differently and separately as may be desh'ed from all printed articles belonging to other classes.

The plate has a. main portion with embossed characters thereon, and it has margins oifset to one side of the plane of the plate by which the plate is guided. The main portion of the plate is elevated and the printing characters are thus brought to the proper plane.

T e selecting embossings are made in this raised or main part of the plate. These embossings are made preferably near one edge of the plate, and it will be noticed that the detector plate is so located that its fingers will extend over the guideway in the table and over the depressed rolled margin of the plate into position to contact with the seective embossings on the plate. The plate feeder is arranged below the surface of the table and in posit-ion to engage one of the depressed margins of the late.

Instead of employing se ector embossings for controlling impressions, I may utilize such embossings for controlling other charwill appear, and an imprint of this total may be made either on a separate slip or on the record strip or sheet which has just received thereon the list of items.

Referring to Figs. 3 and 4:, the printing plates are adapted to receive embossings X at or near one end thereof, representing numbers of the desired denominations.

The spaces for receiving the embossings are indicated by the lines X in Fig. 3, and these lines may be impressed in the back of the plate when it is formed. I show as an example five columns representing units, tens, hundreds, etc., and each column having nine spaces representing digits running from 1 to 9. I have indicated the position of these digits by the numbers 1 to 9. Supposing the plate is to represent a value of one hundred and eighty-six dollars and twenty-five cents, the embossin would appear in the positions indicated 1n Figs. 3 and 4, and when the printing late reaches a certain position in the mac ine, certain mechanism would contact with these embossings and thus determine the proper operation of adding mechanism to take off the value from the plate which it represents this plate, of course, having embossed prmting characters in addition to the selector embossings.

I do not think it necessary to show herein the character of the adding mechanism to be controlled by the selector embossings on the plate.

This specification is a division of that filed by me August 5th, 1914, Serial No. 855,238.

I claim as my invention 1. A record plate having printin characters embossed thereon, and a se ect' embossin consisting of an alphabetica sign or gure embossed in the plate, and ada ted to be printed substantially as de-. scri ed.

2. A record plate having printing characters embossed thereon belonging to a rescribed series and having a selecting 0 aracter or characters also embossed in the plate corresponding to one of the prescribed series of characters to which the said em-" bossed printing characters belong, said selecting characters occupying a position on the said plate corresponding to its position in the series of characters to which it belongs, substantially as described.

3. A record plate having printing charmain portion of the late having printing acters embossed thereon, and an embossed characters embossed t erein, and having a 10 selecting character substantially as' high as selecting character also embossed in said the printing embossings, and adapted to main portion and wholly within the mar- 5 ha printed,- substantially as described. gin of the plate, substantially as described.

4. A record plate havinga main portion In testimony whereof I aflix my signature, with mar 'ns rolled and in a plane to one T side of t e main plane of the plate, the FREDERICK C. DOLCATERV 

